A brief thread on the life, religion, and language of Omar ibn Sa’id, author of the only known Arabic-language autobiography of an enslaved person in the United States.

#3/thread on Angkor wat

Christianity and islam may be the largest religion of today’s world but Sanatan dharm has the largest religious monument in the world in the form of Angkor wat. It is situated in combodia and spread across over 400 acres / 1.6 km².

It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992, which encouraged an international effort to save the complex.
It was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. In Khmer, the Cambodian language, Angkor means "city" and Wat means "temple grounds".

So Angkor Wat means "Temple City". Its original name was Vrah Vishnuloka or Parama Vishnuloka, meaning the sacred dwelling of Vishnu in Sanskrit.
But, it gradually turned into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century & is still used for worship today.

Angkor Wat was initially designed and constructed in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II, as the king’s state temple and capital city. It was built without the aid of any machinery, as there was no machinery available at that time.

Evidence for these dates comes in part from inscriptions, which are vague, but also from the architectural design and artistic style of the temple and its associated sculptures.

Another aspect is that the five central towers of Angkor Wat symbolize the peaks of Mount Meru,

Paul Warburg attended as the American representative, at the Treaty of Versailles conference, where his brother Max was on the German side of the bargaining table…. Before World War II, Max Warburg served on the board of directors of I.G. Farben, the giant German chemical firm.

We will likely never be able to establish with certainty the identity of the two Black men painted by Rembrandt. There are no documents found, linking the painting to individuals. But we can make a reasoned guess. #BlackHistoryMonth #day20 #rembrandt #identification

First there is the problem of the date. The inventory with a reference to 'two Moors in one painting' was drawn up in 1656 in what is now the @Rembrandthuis; however, the painting that hangs in the @Mauritshuis bears not only Rembrandt’s signature but also the year 1661.

Was the painting made in 1656 while Rembrandt was still living and working in Jodenbreestraat, and not signed and sold until 1661, when he had moved to the Jordaan district? The 1656 estate inventory suggests this.

On the other hand, it is of course possible that Rembrandt painted several pictures featuring two black men. Nevertheless, supposing that it is one and the same
painting, then we can assume that the two men
were in the studio in Jodenbreestraat to be portrayed in or before 1656.

Of course there still are dozens of candidates, since there was a small Black community in the area. However, it is striking, and exceptional, that two men are portrayed instead of one, as was customary in this genre.

Buckle up, everyone, this story is *wild*.

The 62-year-old Dyatlov Pass mystery, in which nine students died at the hands of an unknown force, has likely been solved thanks to the movie Frozen and gruesome car crash experiments.

Me, for @NatGeo + thread!

In what has become known as the Dyatlov Pass incident, ten members of the Urals Polytechnic Institute in Yekaterinburg—nine students and one sports instructor who fought in World War II—headed into the frigid wilderness on a skiing expedition on January 23, 1959. 1/x

One student turned back after experiencing joint pain.

He never saw his friends again.

2/x

The team made camp on February 1, pitching a large tent on the snowy slopes of Kholat Saykhl, whose name can be interpreted as “Dead Mountain” in the language of the region’s Indigenous Mansi people. Ominous, sure - but these were experienced mountain hikers. 3/x

The nine were never heard from again.

When a search team arrived at Kholat Saykhl a few weeks later, the tent was found just barely sticking out of the snow, and it appeared cut open from the inside. The next day, the first of the bodies was found near a cedar tree. 4/x